Then, in an unlooked-for instant, an awful wrong shaped itself to a determination. He would hurl his tortured self over the cliff. He told himself that he was not fearful of the fall. In proof thereof, he rushed to the jagged brink of the ledge and looked down into hazy moonlit s.p.a.ce and was unafraid.

With a desperate movement he s.n.a.t.c.hed his hat off and cast it down at his feet. His toes inched over the abyss in his aberration. He gathered a long breath. His knees bent to the leap. His heels raised slowly under him; when in this instant a memory dashed upon him, and he straightened and stiffened, electrified.

The thought of Caleb Peevy rived into his muddled, benumbed mind. Caleb Peevy, who had jumped wilfully off Henhawk's k.n.o.b into h.e.l.lsfork three years since, and had gone to h.e.l.l, so they said. A check of repugnance swept him as he recalled the lasting scorn and contempt of the mountain folk, and the epithet of coward--coward that followed Peevy past the grave with its two-edged stigma that linked, inseparably, to his memory to-night.

Lem drew back, stung with self-shame. A hope drifted back into his distraught breast. He looked upward into the astral sky for G.o.d's guiding star that Maw Lutts had shown to him. All a-quiver, he watched for the flambeau of Belle-Ann's pious prophecy: "Know ye the truth and the truth shall make ye free!" A divine revelation ebbed across his chaotic senses.

With a sudden replenished faith he looked to G.o.d, as he recalled the despised, loathsome dead man now lying on the altar of the church--asleep now, across the crimson picture that his, now dead, hand had shaped with the blood of Lem's father. Surely none but G.o.d's hand had wrought this retribution. Verily, this Omnipotent Being would not forsake him now?

He was now sensible to the G.o.d-sent monitor that had saved him from McGill. He was sensible to the Providential agency that saved him from the Judas, Orlick.

With praises, he remembered Belle-Ann's escape from this vampire. Surely this self-same G.o.d would not deny him now. Lem did not mumble disjointedly now. He did not whisper incoherent, aimless pleas.

Now, from the crest of the world, his aching breast heaving, and his erring feet firm upon his ancestral Rock of Ages, he lifted his face up to the trembling stars, as with outstretched, pleading arms he cried out vociferously to G.o.d for Him to come to him--called out, in ringing, fulsome words that carried afar, for Him to hasten, lest he perish in the conflict that made blind agony within him.

And ere his wet, quivering lips had closed, and while still his eyes were upward, and his two arms imploring Heaven, the two forces that had, like live combatants, met midway of his soul for supremacy, did separate.

The white purity of Righteousness had come into his evil heart, and the blackness dropped away and out of his life! And all the old poisonous venom, festering soul sores and gnawing misery ebbed out of the boy's being and left it receptive to the influx of harmony and heart-peace that he saw in Belle-Ann and which he so ardently craved.

Panting like a spent man at the end of a long run, Lem now fell down on his knees in his copious grat.i.tude.

On his knees, his head on his arm, in a divine lethargy, he rested. With prayerful, oft-said words he pondered vaguely upon this miracle. So engrossed in his felicitude and deep thanksgiving was he that he did not see the gruesome spectacle at his back.

Belle-Ann sat upon the witch-elm block and strained her eager eyes upward. Aloft there on Eagle Crown she could see Lem against the moon-laved night. Now she could discern his figure full--now his upper half. Again his head only would make a blot. Moving--always moving. She divined the terrible struggle going on in his breast, in his will to renounce the hurtful creed that heredity had written in his blood, and she realized that the conflict was all for her own sake. She measured the boy's love and honor with ample adoration. He would not come to her with a lie on his lips to disguise the heritage of murder coiled in his heart.

As Belle-Ann waited and watched tensely, a pulsing anxiety swept her heart, like recurring waves gale-driven. Suddenly she leaped with a bound from the witch-elm block, her eyes full of a startling picture.

The moon on the descent had caught Eagle Crown rock in its mystic grip, holding it out like a mighty bauble adorning the breast of the mountain.

Lem's full figure, framed within the moon's disk, was etched in magical proportions, like the portrayal of a powerful night gla.s.s.

Enraptured, she looked and saw Lem on the brink of the cliff, seemingly so near that she instinctively stretched out a hand to attract him. As she looked she saw him stretch his two arms outward and upward, and she understood their pantomimic plea.

The next instant the sound of his voice, faintly audible, reached her ear. She heard his inarticulate utterance, as with a fervent cry he called out to G.o.d, from his dire distraught heart.

Belle-Ann's white bosom heaved and caught a sob of salient joy as she darted up the trail toward Eagle Crown. She would fly to his side now.

Lem needed her now. He needed her, who was a part of his life, there to succor him in this the blackest bereft hour of his existence. She knew that G.o.d had heard his abandoned supplications. She knew that G.o.d was reaching down to him a staff of righteous strength. She would hurry to his side, with the re-enforcement of her own great love while G.o.d was there helping him.

Belle-Ann darted to the rock-runged ladder that led the jagged, perilous way up to Eagle Crown. She climbed and climbed and climbed. Many times did she pause for breath. Then she climbed again and turned and twisted and clung on and pulled herself upward, always upward, insensible to fatigue. At last her eyes reached the level of the great jutting boulder and her gaze fell off into moonlit s.p.a.ce. She drew her lithe self up and, half turning, beheld Lem's rec.u.mbent form bowed down beside a dun indenture in the table rock. He was unconscious of her presence. There was pathos in his crouching, still form.

There was dazed, mute ecstasy in the dark violet of Belle-Ann's eyes which never lifted from this penitent figure. She stood, to still her pounding heart, and waited for him to feel her nearness, or turn his face to her. The satin l.u.s.tre of her curls was moist and her bosom lifted, palpitating with the advent of the new, great joyous thing that stood upon the threshold of her life to enter and spread its felicity and untold bliss.

All oblivious, Lem was kneeling amidst this new-found grace, and the quiet of a peace that cometh only to the righteous. Belle-Ann had suffered its pangs. She had reaped its peace. She knew the pathology of the pestilent revenge-sore that blights the lives of men. And she experienced all that Lem felt.

With her eyes still upon him, Belle-Ann took one quick, short step forward. She spoke his name, low and soft and vibrant with adoration.

As though he expected her, he looked up, smiling and tranquil, and his every radiant feature told of the triumph that compa.s.sed his renovated soul, purged now and wholly clean of its vindictive l.u.s.t.

His apostasy was full and complete. He rose up strong now and bigger and taller than she had noted an hour since. And there was plain in his face at that instant a certain n.o.bility and greatness.

He stretched his eager, long arms out to her.

"I'll let yo' lead me,--I'll let yo' lead me now, Belle-Ann!" he cried out, his happy eyes aglow with emotion and untold, deathless love.

She tossed the curls back from her lovely be-dimpled features, all aflush now. With a finger upon her bowed lips she answered:

"Kiss me heah--Lem," and walked into his waiting arms.

CHAPTER XLI

IN WHICH PROVIDENCE TAKES A HAND

He crushed her to him with a pa.s.sion that bade fair to stop her breath.

He poured out his kisses upon her lips, and face, and eyes. He kissed the little scar that crossed the part in her hair. And there he held her for long, lingering minutes, loath to untwine his arms. Her hot breath was on his neck, and he surfeited his senses upon the incense of her curls.

"We'll all go down to Blue-Gra.s.s together now, won't we, Lem?" she said.

"Sho'--I'm done a warrin' now--I'm done fo' always--an', Belle-Ann, my darlin'--I want t' git a edication like yo'-all--eh?--I want t' make myself fittin' fo' yo'. I sho' will do hit, with Gawd's help--an'

yore'n. I aimed to ax yo' again to marry me pint-blank--but I don't want yo' to jest now--'til I'm fittin'--I air a goin' to study th' books by day an' by night--I know I kin learn--I'll do hit er bust--then when yore sure I'm fittin'--an' kin talk nice like yo'--an' look decent-like--then--then----"

He drew her to him and buried his face in her curls.

"Little Belle-Ann," he muttered, his joy crowding his words, "little gal, whut I knowed would come back----"

"Did I not cross my heart, Lem?" she said, and as her lips parted to tell to him all that lay in her heart for the future, a swift, blighting look of horror dashed into the girl's face, leaving it whiter than moon-pallor. A half-screamed, incoherent outcry burst from her lips as with outstretched arm she pointed behind him. Responding instantly to her alarm, Lem flung himself around.

Together, transfixed and agape, they stared. A startling sight stood in front of their eyes--a spectacle that filled the sensitive girl with a panting, sickening horror. She stood all a-quiver, her two little hands clutching her breast and her violet eyes swimming in terror. For a tense long minute they could neither speak nor move.

Then Belle-Ann's one hand shot out and grasped Lem's sleeve imploringly.

"Oh, Lem--Lem!" she cried, "can't we get it out--oh! can't we hurry and take it out, Lem?" but even as she talked she knew the hopelessness of the intent in her mind.

"I 'low hits too late now, Belle-Ann," returned he, in tones a trifle unsteady. "Hit air G.o.d's buryin' now," he added, with no trace of venom in his tones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Hit air G.o.d's buryin' now."]

"Oh!--Lem, it's too awful--too terrible to watch and think about,"

pursued Belle-Ann in half whispers broken with emotion. She dropped her lids and placed her hands over her eyes.

The night wind carried an ominous groan. A dully grinding, crepitating sound came up to the lofty heights of Eagle Crown.

Even now there was a tremendous gutting upheaval below them; then with a dynamitic cough of concussion the entire roof of the church belched upward and fell in and a wide black flight of smoke hurried up to the high heavens and blotted the scintillant stars. Then a measureless, f.l.a.n.g.ed blanket of blood-hued flame followed, propelling still higher the ebon clouds above it.

Here the flame turned to orange and split, and dropped back into a seething pit, where it gathered another and greater force. Then a lance-like turret of pure fire spurted straight upward, struggling and twisting and stabbing its lurid path through the pitchy volumes of smoke that rolled and plunged and tumbled infernally; filching with edacious swirls, great amber flakes of tinder, delivering them up in spiral gusts to the whining wilderness wind, which in turn hurtled its meteoric salvage, red and alive, out over the rampant waters of h.e.l.lsfork.

The clearing was transformed into an oscillating arena of lurid light that eclipsed the stars and drove the moon pallid. The front wall supporting the belfry was last to go. Its superstructure half devoured, the belfry itself clung on fearfully askew, like a man skidded from a high cliff, hanging by a single root awaiting his strength to ebb. The pitiless flames duelled, raged and fought ferociously over their prey of fire-bitten logs that strove vainly to rise, only to be stricken, again to fall back, casting groans to the spectral night. They turned and stirred and crawled in agony, like the maimed half dead.